Category Archives: rant

kudos, rant

Fire near Temecula, Twitter a mixed blessing

So the De Luz fire headed straight for Temecula; I can understand that, it’s a nice place to visit. My first touch on the existence of that fire was at work, when a co-worker’s wife called from Fallbrook about the smoke there.

Huh, fire near Temecula, which will likely impact my commute home. So I decided to find some information online about this fire; that was at around 4:30 PM. There was an hour old news article that came up on Google, and no real results from a Google blog search. Hmmm, I thought, what about Twitter?

As a matter of fact, the information I found with a search on Twitter for “temecula fire” was fairly helpful; so much so that I saved the search term since I just knew it would be useful later.

Now, if you’re looking for news on the fire itself and somehow got to this post, I would suggest you check the info now up on The Californian. Although, I couldn’t help but be struck by how well this fire was handled, especially in light of the recent “minimizing” of the local firefighters due to budget constraints, as reported by The Press-Enterprise.

My big gripe in this is about how puerile folks got on Twitter. When I later went back, and looked for results on “temecula fire” on Twitter, a bunch of fools had decided it would be great fun to post links to, well, adult content under the guise of info links. I realize that wanting responsibility in Twitter use is as futile as expecting good spelling from YouTube comments… but it ticked me off.

So, bottom line, good job points to slimly budgeted firefighters, and shame points to tweeting twits.

rant, work

Blackboard 8 Grade Center and Extra Credit Hell

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I actually like the changes made between every prior version of Blackboard’s Gradebook and their (new with version 8) Grade Center. Even the bugs are exciting and new, rather than the old, familiar bugs that faculty are quickly forgetting about in the glare of learning the new interfaces and quirks. (Bear in mind that the Gradebook hadn’t changed appreciably in a decade of use.)

That being said, the bug associated with Grade Center’s handling of Extra Credit columns is terrible! In the old Gradebook, instructors added a column, worth zero points possible, and then gave students points in that column. Simple, easy, and the totaling column counted the extra credit properly.

Now with Grade Center, if an instructor does the exact same thing… the Total column does NOT add the Extra Credit, but ignores it instead. (Actually this is true of any column with zero points possible.)

There is a work-around, but… it’s incredibly frustrating to explain to an instructor that they have to do extra work just because Blackboard’s Quality Assurance guys missed such an obvious trick.

To make the Total column include the zero points possible columns, go to the Modify Column screen for the Total column. (Personally I’m enjoying the little “double chevron” buttons, although I find it hard to remember they exist sometimes.) Scroll down to section 3 of the screen, and change the radio button from “All Grade Columns” to “Selected Grade Columns, Calculated Columns and Categories”.

The screen will change, and then in the newly appearing “Columns to Select:” box you can choose each of the columns from your Grade Center and click the little “arrow in a circle” button to shift them into the “Selected Columns:” box at the right of the screen. (Please note that you can click the first column, hold the Shift key, then click the last to select all the columns in that box on the left.)

This next step is not actually included in any of the documentation I’ve seen yet on Grade Center (and so I’ll need to ensure it IS included in mine from now on): Make sure the “Calculate as running total” settings is set to “No”. If you leave running total on, you will still be ignoring the zero point columns!

Now just Submit this bad boy, and your Total column should be including the zero point columns, both manually entered grades and those from tests, assignments, and discussion boards.

Do the happy dance! (And don’t forget to feel scorn for the Bb QA guys who overlooked such a buggy subsystem.)

Just don’t get me started on how I feel about the whole “Grade Center can drop the lowest test score” debacle…

rant

Bad Spellers of the World, Untie!

Okay, seriously folks. Your word processor, email editor, web browser, these all have spell checkers. So there’s no good excuse for any formal communication to contain a mis-spelt word, right?

Please remember that, just because all the words are correctly spelled, this doen’t mean the statement makes sense as written. “You keep on using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means…” Or, proof your work!

Oh, and if I see one more formal memo go out with “your” in place of “you’re” (and, yes, I realize a formal memo oughtent to have a contraction in it in the first place, but believe it or not I’m not really a stickler for this kind of thing) I think I may make a critical failure of my SAN check.

rant, work

9>8, and Headdesk!

Okay, so a student calls up for technical support.

“I can’t log in. When I log in, it says I’m not enrolled in any classes.”
ME: “So, you can log in, but it says you are not enrolled?”
“No, I can’t log in.”

What?!?

Much later…
ME: “Can I get your nine-digit student ID number so I can find you in the system?”
“Uh, yeah…” and gives me a five digit number.
ME: “That’s only five digits. Your student ID is nine digits long.”
“Uh…” and gives me three more digits.
ME: “That’s eight. Your student ID is nine digits. Are you sure you know your student ID number?” (This is important, as the username for the system IS that nine-digit number!)
“Yeah. That’s it…” and gives me a different eight digit number.
ME: “Again, that’s still eight digits.”
“No, that’s my number…” and gives me yet another eight digit number. “So, can you find my name in the system?”
ME: “…no.”
“Oh, I don’t have my number here, let me call you back.”
ME: “Okay, that sounds like a good idea. Do you have our direct phone number, or were you transferred here from somewhere else?”
“No, I have to go find my number. I’ll call you back.”
Click.

Ugh.

Later, the phone rings. Guess who?
ME: “Okay, so what is your nine-digit student ID number?”
“Like I told you before…” and gives me a nine-digit number, which bears no resemblence to the previous sequence of numbers.
ME: “Okay, here you are in the system. When you log in, just use your nine-digit student ID number, and the same password you used when you enrolled in classes using our enrollment system.”
“I don’t have an account for the enrollment system.”
ME: “Yes, you do. I can talk you through the process of setting your password there, okay?”
“Okay.”
ME: “First, start a web browser.”
“…”
ME: “Are you at a computer right now?”
“No.”
ME: “Fine. I’ll just give you some instructions to try later, shall I?”

Now, I ask you, when you have a problem, do you try to make it impossible for someone to help you? If your car engine is making a funny noise do you park it in your driveway, walk to the bus station, and take the bus to your mechanic, then ask him for help?

I guess I just assume too much…

Sheesh.

rant, work

Bomb?

Well, things are “interesting” (as in the Chinese proverb) right now on campus at Palomar College. There was a bomb threat called in, as reported by our campus newspaper. (Because of truly bad page design, you have to scroll down the page to see the article.)

Of course, much of the information in that article is incorrect. For example, campus has NOT been evacuated; rather some students were herded to evacuation points (while others in the building where I work, the Library) were not. Even those students were told, at alternate times that they could not leave, that they must leave (but as some parking lots were closed they couldn’t take their cars), and that they were free to leave but may not be allowed back on campus.

In all of this, the campus is not officially closed, and classes are not cancelled. (Some students and faculty were unable to attend, but… no, no, the class isn’t cancelled.) As a staff member, I was told NOT to leave – even for lunch – which has just made my day… great.

And, mind you, most of this information was discovered by either asking passing police officers and searching the Internet. Very little information has been officially released to employees by the college.

Oh, and can you guess just how much work is getting done in this environment? Yeah…

rant

Second Verse

…same as the first, a little bit louder, a little bit worse.

Had a power outage at work yesterday, when I was thankfully not working. (My shift runs Wednesday through Saturday 6 am to 5pm, usually.) This is not too atypical, being in San Diego County where SDG&E both overcharges for power and has insufficient power distribution installed. However, yesterday the issue was due to an aged and insufficiently powerful transformer on campus. (Apparently when they added the new, three story, multi-million dollar building they opted not to upgrade the already old and over-stressed transformer.)

Now everyone is behaving as if we’ve never had such an occurance before, even though we average one a year.

Yes, no one had any idea how to find flashlights, no one knew who to contact for assistance (when elevators shut down mid-floor) or who to contact to find out if the campus was closing or not. But no one EVER knows these things.

Every time we have a power outage there is this flurry of emails, announcements, and resolutions to do better next time… And every time the “next time” rolls around, it’s all a little bit louder, a little bit worse.

Personally, I not only have a rechargeable flashlight plugged in right next to my desk, but… I “know where my towel is.” If only we could reach that level of preparedness on an institutional level… ah well, back to my lunch break.

rant

(Un)Professionals

I’d finally decided to re-join the cable TV-watching society with Time Warner Cable, after having been without cable (or any other form of TV broadcast) for over four years. The install was requested, scheduled, and confirmed online, and I was the proud possessor of a confirmed installation 1-4 p.m. yesterday. Yeah, right.

I’d finally gotten through all the red tape in the purchasing department, and my request for a Dell (really Motion Computing, but Dell re-sells to us at a better price than the manufacturer will) Tablet PC. The request hit the Dell site July 28, but I didn’t sweat it; it would get here when it got here, and Dell is usually quick. Not this time, boyo… the estimated delivery date is now advancing to the current date each morning.

Why are businesses so okay now with the idea of failing to serve the customer?

Time Warner could have contacted me (email or phone) to say that the installation workload was too high that day, or that someone called in sick, or just plain “sorry, we can’t make it today”. Instead three phone calls, a cumulative hour and a quarter on hold, and quite a bit of frustration latter, I hear the installers knock off at 7 p.m. (and this being 7:30), so could I reschedule for tomorrow? They didn’t know, by the time my “confirmed time window” expired, what the workload looked like?!?

Dell could have done some contacting of their own, but at least the progression on the computer “assembly” is documented on their website. They do provide a link there for “why is my order taking so long?” which points to a blog post from nearly a month ago saying that there are production delays on certain models of laptop – none of which are the model of tablet I was ordering. C’mon guys… if you’re going to make up a reason for the delay, at least make it context sensitive.

There’s nothing wrong with telling your customers the truth! I would prefer to hear “sorry, can’t make it” than be left in service limbo. Maybe I can find some professionals who are willing to be.